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Facing the Communication Challenges during an Earthquake Swarm Period
Abstract
When earthquake swarms catch public attention, seismologists face a difficult communication challenge. On the one hand, they do not want to create unnecessary anxiety, because most swarms eventually die off, but at the same time, they know that these events could also be foreshocks to a larger, possibly damaging, earthquake. What then should a seismologist say that will remain within the scope of science to assist the public and community leaders to make appropriate choices? Probabilistic statements are scientifically verifiable but provide little comfort to anxious people and, for most citizens, give no guidance about whether they should or should not prepare for an earthquake. We are proponents of actions that allow individuals, families, and communities to acquire a sense of control that encourages individual and collective efficacy—a key element of fostering resilience in times of high anxiety. Seismologists can help foster resilience by capitalizing on windows of opportunity when people are inclined to pay attention to the scientists’ message and to take action based upon practical and credible information. Making the most of a window of opportunity will also improve the likelihood of an appropriate response if an event does occur. We believe that the public is ready to accept the limitations of the Earth Sciences (such as the inability to make definite predictions), especially if the guidance is reasonable, comforting, makes logical sense, and is conveyed with compassion. Based on these premises, we propose a message that should form the basis of press releases, webpage content, Tweets, etc., for seismologists who communicate with the public to use during earthquake swarm periods.
... Possible causes for low insurance take-up rates include: high price [9], risk perception [10][11][12], unattractive policy structure (e.g. high deductible) [4,7], low risk awareness [4,13,14], and misunderstanding of the policy terms [13]. In addition, people may have optimistic expectation of government assistance or compensation after major natural disasters [4]. ...
... Possible causes for low insurance take-up rates include: high price [9], risk perception [10][11][12], unattractive policy structure (e.g. high deductible) [4,7], low risk awareness [4,13,14], and misunderstanding of the policy terms [13]. In addition, people may have optimistic expectation of government assistance or compensation after major natural disasters [4]. ...
... One of the puzzling issues related to earthquake insurance in Canada is the significant discrepancy of insurance take-up rates in the west and in the east [13,14]. For instance, typical ranges of the take-up rates for British Columbia and Quebec are 10-70% and 3-4%, respectively, although locations with similar seismic hazard levels, in terms of current national seismic hazard maps of Canada [21], can be found in these provinces (e.g. ...
This study investigates relationships between earthquake insurance take-up rates and seismic risk indicators for residential housing stocks in Canada. The insurance take-up rates are estimated by analyzing Canadian insurance data at the spatial granularity of the 2016 Canadian Census’s Forward Sortation Areas, whereas objective seismic risk metrics (annual expected loss) are computed at the same spatial resolution based on a valid earthquake catastrophe model for Canadian wood-frame houses. The results clearly show that households in British Columbia and Quebec respond to earthquake risks differently. The take-up rates for British Columbia residents are proportional to exposed risk levels (increasing from 10% to 70%), whereas those for Quebec residents are consistently low irrespective of exposed hazard and risk levels (3% to 4%). Following that, possible explanations and remedies for the observed differences of the earthquake insurance take-up rates between British Columbia and Quebec are discussed by referring to recent surveys and public campaigns that were conducted in the two provinces.
... At first, these automatic systems have to provide robust, precise, and accurate results, which constitute the basis of consequent decisions and actions. Then, earthquake alerts need to be appropriately prepared, in terms of logical sense, completeness, and clarity (Lamontagne et al. 2016). A fundamental point concerns the timing of alerting, because nonseismologists necessarily request a prompt and concise response. ...
... In a similar way, CASP automatic locations can be used for monitoring (quasi real-time) seismic moment variations, both in time and space within the area of interest. CASP can be used by civil protection and decision makers in order to promptly evaluate strong earthquakes or seismic sequences in relation with local targets, such as town and city locations or population density, also supporting a correct and complete communication (National Research Council 2006, Lamontagne et al. 2016. Strong motion data can be very useful to estimate the seismic shaking at relevant infrastructures. ...
An application of the Complete Automatic Seismic Processor (CASP) for seismic monitoring is presented. Its integrated and iterative fully automatic procedure is able to achieve complete data analysis and significantly rapid elaborations. Its performance in real-time seismic monitoring and alerting is tested in the Trentino region (NE Italy) for the period 1st March 2018 – 31st August 2019. CASP precisely and accurately located 386 seismic events, with local magnitudes in the -0.8–3.4 range, and produced a seismic catalogue with a magnitude of completeness around 1.1. Automatic earthquake solutions, with average horizontal and vertical errors of 1.1 and 1.5 km, are very similar to those included in a manually revised reference catalogue. In addition, 146 detected events are located in the area of the local porphyry quarries. CASP alerts are delivered as Short Message Service (SMS), Telegram and e-mail messages within an average time of just over two minutes from the earthquake origin time. These alerts contain earthquake source parameters, ground shaking levels and instrumental intensities. CASP reliability, promptness and robustness permit to civil protection and decision makers to perform a monitoring primarily dedicated to emergency management, in order to evaluate both seismic sources and their effects (peak ground acceleration) at local targets, such as more inhabited territories and critical infrastructures (dams and hydropower plants).
... • their risk-taking tendency using a 10-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (extremely unwilling to take risks) to 10 (extremely willing to take risks), and • socioeconomic characteristics: gender, highest level of school completed, categorical range of prior-year household income, and their postal code. The types of the gathered data of participants' characteristics were decided based on various empirical studies that identified the influential factors in deciding the purchase of earthquake insurance (Kunreuther, 1996;Lamontagne et al., 2016;Lin, 2020;Liu & Jiao, 2018;Palm, 1995;Tian et al., 2014). ...
This article describes the design and analysis of web‐based choice experiments that examine how the demand for earthquake protection in Quebec and British Columbia (BC), Canada, is influenced by the default option and the structure of the insurance plan. Homeowners in both provinces were given the opportunity to purchase protection against earthquake losses when presented with one of the following options: the current private insurance plan and proposed public–private Risk Pools with different levels of the public layer. The default frame was changed so the homeowner could either opt‐in by purchasing this coverage or opt‐out of being given this protection and receiving a premium discount. Assigning participants to the public–private Risk Pools rather than the current private insurance plan increases the likelihood of purchasing earthquake insurance protection by an odds ratio of 2.7 or greater in BC and Quebec. Furthermore, opt‐out enrollment design substantially increases take‐up of earthquake protection relative to opt‐in enrollment. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.
... Well in advance of any seismic unrest events, public communication about earthquakes requires planning, education, and training by those with governmental responsibility (e.g., Alexander, 2010;Lamontagne et al., 2016;McBride et al., 2019). Any new pre-event hazard alerts-potentially in the days, hours, and minutes prior to an event-should be part of a consistent continuum of information, extending from long-term hazard awareness education, through pre-event alert levels, earthquake early warnings, to guidance for immediate event response, and followed by further education while interest levels are high. ...
... Regarding impacts, our analysis supports the statement from McClure et al. (2001) that the representation of the seismic risk that is built by the press emphasizes the immediate and overly destructive nature of the event, occulting the real timing of such disasters: a time to anticipate and get prepared, a time to protect, and a time to recover and reconstruct. We agree with authors such as Lamontagne et al. (2016) and Wood et al. (2009), who stated that scientific messages should encourage people to take preparatory actions and get them prepared for potential losses, describe to them the timeline of the disaster cycle and teach them ways to diminish losses. ...
The capacity of individuals to cope with threatening situations depends directly on their capacity to anticipate what will come next. The media should play a key role in that respect, but an extensive analysis of earthquake media coverage by the international news reveals systematic biases. Exploring a corpus of 320 888 news articles published by 32 worldwide newspapers in 2015 in English, Spanish or French, we found that the press covers a very small number of events: 71 % of the news about seismic events was dedicated to only 3 earthquakes (among the 1559 magnitude 5+ events). A combination of frequency and content analysis reveals a typical framing of the “earthquake news”. Except for the “Nepal quake”, the duration of the coverage is usually very short. Thus, the news tends to focus on short-term issues: the event magnitude, tsunami alerts, human losses, material damage and rescue operations. Longer-term issues linked to the recovery, restoration, reconstruction, mitigation and prevention are barely addressed. Preventive safety measures are almost never mentioned. The news on impacts shows a peculiar appetency for death counts, material damage estimates and sensationalism. News on the response tends to emphasize the role played by the international community in helping the “poor and vulnerable”. The scientific content of the coverage is often restricted to mentions of the magnitude, with the concept of the seismic intensity being largely ignored. The notion of the “seismic crisis” also seems unclear, with aftershocks sometimes being treated as isolated events. Secondary hazards are barely mentioned, except in the case of tsunami alerts. Together, these biases contribute to fatalistic judgments that damage cannot be prevented. If scientific messages are to be communicated, they should be broadcast a few hours after an event. Why not take the opportunity to familiarize people with the real timeline of seismic disasters?
The capacity of individuals to cope with threatening situations depends directly on their capacity to anticipate what will come next. The media should play a key role in that respect, but an extensive analysis of earthquake media coverage by the international press reveals systematic biases. Exploring a corpus of 320 888 news articles published by 32 worldwide newspapers in 2015 in English, Spanish or French, we found that the press covers a very small number of events: 71 % of the news was dedicated to only 3 earthquakes (among the 1559 of magnitude 5+). A combination of frequency and content analysis reveals a typical framing of the earthquake news. Except for the Nepal quake, the duration of the coverage is usually very short. The news thus tends to focus on short-term issues: the event magnitude, tsunami alerts, human losses, material damage, and rescue operations. Longer-term issues linked to the recovery, restoration, reconstruction, mitigation and prevention are barely addressed. Preventive safety measures are almost never mentioned. The news on impacts show a peculiar appetency for death counts, material damage estimates and sensationalism. News on the response tends to emphasize the role played by the international community in helping the poor and vulnerable. The scientific content of the coverage is often restricted to mentions of the magnitude, with the concept of the seismic intensity being largely ignored. The notion of the seismic crisis also seems unclear, with aftershocks sometimes being treated as isolated events. Secondary hazards are barely mentioned, except in the case of tsunami alerts. Together, these biases contribute to fatalistic judgments that damage cannot be prevented. If scientific messages are to be communicated, they should be broadcast a few hours after an event. Why not taking that opportunity to familiarize people with the real timeline of seismic disasters?
This article reports on a workshop held to explore the potential uses of operational earthquake forecasting (OEF). We discuss the current status of OEF in the United States and elsewhere, the types of products that could be generated, the various potential users and uses of OEF, and the need for carefully crafted communication protocols. Although operationalization challenges remain, there was clear consensus among the stakeholders at the workshop that OEF could be useful.